Chinatown Express (Ala Moana 2015)

As I mentioned on our review of Curry Cafe, I was pleasantly surprised at the food at the local food courts in Hawaii.
Chinatown Express is located in the Ala Moana Center food court and isn’t like the typical Chinese food stalls in Vancouver shopping malls. The sheer variety and number of options available in this one stall puts the ones in Vancouver to shame. Can you even imagine having four types of fried rice to pick from?

They had Hawaiian Fried Rice with Kalua Pork, Veggie Fried Rice, Kung Pao Fried Rice, Char Siu Fried Rice… along with a lot of other starches. You can pair that up with things like Bitter Melon and Beef, Sweet and Spicy Eggplant, Garlic Choy Sum, or Honey Walnut Shrimp.

They also had a selection of mochi, cookies, and mooncakes.

In the back, they have large steamers filled with fresh dim sum.

We picked some dim sum dishes including Potstickers, Siu Mai, Shrimp and Chives Dumplings, and Har Gow. They pan-fried the gyoza for us fresh and it was quite good. The filling was large and plump with a nice crispness to the exterior from the pan-fry.

The rest of the dim sum was just okay… but I’d definitely come back for the potstickers.

If you’re looking for a large variety of Chinese food in the Ala Moana Center, you’re not going to find more options than here.